"'This is war—archaic, uncivilized war, but war. All rules have been thrown away; all nobility; man has come down to the primitive brute. And while we cannot justify, we cannot intervene. It is not our war.'
IN WAR TO DEFEND RIGHTS.
"Then why are we in? Because we could not keep out. The invasion of Belgium, which opened the war, led to the invasion of the United States by slow, steady, logical steps. Our sympathies evolved into a conviction of self-interest. Our love of fair play ripened into alarm at our own peril.
"We talked in the language and in the spirit of good faith and sincerity, as honest men should talk, until we discovered that our talk was construed as cowardice. And Mexico was called upon to cow us.
"We talked as men would talk who cared alone for peace and the advancement of their own material interests, until we discovered that we were thought to be a nation of mere moneymakers, devoid of all character—until, indeed, we were told that we could not walk the highways of the world without permission of a Prussian soldier, that our ships might not sail without wearing a striped uniform of humiliation upon a narrow path of national subservience.
"We talked as men talk who hope for honest agreement, not for war, until we found that the treaty torn to pieces at Liege was but the symbol of a policy that made agreements worthless against a purpose that knew no word but success.
"And so we came into this war for ourselves. It is a war to save America, to preserve self-respect, to justify our right to live as we have lived, not as some one else wishes us to live. In the name of freedom we challenge with ships and men, money and an undaunted spirit, that word 'verboten' which Germany has written upon the sea and upon the land.
"For America is not the name of so much territory. It is a living spirit, born in travail, grown in the rough school of bitter experiences, a living spirit which has purpose and pride and conscience, knows why it wishes to live and to what end, knows how it comes to be respected of the world, and hopes to retain that respect by living on with the light of Lincoln's love of man as its old and new testaments.
AMERICA MUST LIVE.
"It is more precious that this America should live than that we Americans should live. And this America as we now see has been challenged from the first of this war by the strong arm of a power that has no sympathy with our purpose, and will not hesitate to destroy us if the law that we respect, the rights that are to us sacred, or the spirit that we have, stand across her set will to make this world bow before her policies, backed by her organized and scientific military system. The world of Christ—a neglected but not a rejected Christ—has come again face to face with the world of Mahomet, who willed to win by force.